55: OMG! Snail killed Kenny! You bastard!

Ahh, this seems to be working now

Well, this is a South Park reference, for those of you who may be unfamiliar. I had a hard time with the white, but enough tweaking in PS and RAW Essentials got me here

In regards to yesterdays pictures - I got the effect by sliding teh shadow contrast and highlight contrast all the way to the right in RAW Essentials, and that's basically it.

The link to the triptych plugin is:
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/readflat.asp?forum=1006&thread=16558217&page=1

Ugly link. To lazy to fix it and make it pretty.

The snail is a Hungarian porcelin snail I picked up when I was there a few years back. It is one of the things they are known for, and I love the sheen it has. They also make some with a cool red sheen to it, besides the green. They also do 'normal' porcelin as well, all very beautiful.

Rant On
So Zoto revamped their website. Which is great. But they didn't give much notice about it, and it included doing things like taking away the blogging feature and making it a feature that needs to be paid for. Thay are also changing the galleries feature, so that we don't get unlimited galleries any more. This is fine, but I can't find any info on how many galleries us non-payers get. Very confusing, and a little dissapointing. I suppose I will go get that smugmug account now. We shall see. I'm waiting to see what all the other tweaks are.
Rant Off

54: Liam

Ok, third time is the charm. I hate how I can't fix the size of the picture after you've uploaded when you are using zoto. ERGH. Hopefully, this time it will publish and be the right size

This is my friend's son, Liam. He just turned two on Friday. Happy birthday, Liam! He is a very sweet kid, and was generous enough to share all his toy cars with me!

I was fiddling in RAW Essentials with the shadow and highlight sliders, and ended up with this. I liked the effect, so I decided to keep it.

I love his expression in this picture. His expression seems much older than he really is.

And so everyone can see how sweet he is without a lot of post processing, you get to look at another picture of him, too!

53: Triptych

My first attempt at a triptych.  I used a Photoshop action that I found, and then it was basically drag and drop into the frames. 

This is at one of the entrances to Jarry Park in Montreal.  I suppose it's a welcoming figure of fun, sprintime, and happiness.  I like the little cardinal on its left hand.  The park is where the Rogers Tennis Cup is played every year.  It brings in the big names, Roddick, Agassi, the Williams, etc. etc.  It alternates every year between the men's and women's.  The other place it is held is in Toronto, I think.  It is also where the Expos used to play many years ago.  The park was so nice.  There was a hill with kids sliding down it, and an ice skating rink.  I really need to strap my ice skates on at some point this season before it's to late!  I wanted to take pictures of the kids sliding down the hill, but I chickened out.  I got a sudden paranoia of crazed parents chasing me through the park yelling at me.  So I took pictures of the scultpure instead.

I had my first paid job as a photographer today.  wOOt!!  I had a lot of fun, and I'm happy with the results.  It was a group shot, so I used the 'everybody close your eyes and open them when I count to three.'  Needless to say it seemed to work.  I have very few where someone has their eyes closed.  I used a fill in flash for the faces, which worked well.  My boyfriend has been kind enough to lend me his flash that he used to use with his 35mm Yashica.  Glad I had it because I don't think the on board flash would have been strong enough.  And no, I won't be posting shots from it.  Sorry!

I got about half way through commenting on PADs yesterday, and am hoping to get through the rest today or tomorrow.

You guys rock.  It's amazing seeing everybody's shots, the little pieces of your lives and how people see things through a camera.  Kudos to everyone!

52: Still Standing

Isn't mother nature neat?

51: Deer

50: Me

1.6 kilometers to 1 mile.  That's the conversion for those asking about yesterdays PAD

So, I finally got the courage to put myself in front of the camera.  You can ask my friends and my boyfriend, I HATE having my picture taken.  I always make a face and make everybody mad.

One thing I realized today: 10 seconds is not a lot of time to run in sit on the chair.  To add to wishlist: remote shutter release for my camera

No worries, I made sure the ice was nice and thick.  Minus 20 C weather helps as well.  So, this is me.

I'm hoping to make this an on again off again series of me sitting in a chair in random places.  We'll see how far I get

49: 300,000 Clicks!

This is my boyfriend (in yesterday's PAD) car. He just passed 300,000 kilometers today on our way to the country. He's never had a car for this long, so he was very excited. Good thing we were in the country because we simply stopped just on the side of the road and took pictures.

Today was gorgeouscompared to yesterday. Freezing cold, but their had been freezing rain and CRAZY winds (up to 110 kph) yesterday. There was a 70 (!!) car pile up outside of the island of Montreal. One person died, and two major injuries if I recall correctly. Due to the wind being so strong, there were sudden white out conditions on the highway. Naturally, everyone slows down. However, roads were already icey, and this resulted in this horrific accident. There was another huge accident outside of Ottawa I beleieve.

For you warm weather people who never see snow, a white out is when the snow is blowing so much, you can't see anything except white. It can be very disorienting if you are walking because you can't even tell what is up or down anymore.

I was going to do errands and go to my last lecture yesterday. Needless to say, I did neither. The pictures in today's paper of people getting litteraly swept off their feet made me glad I didn't.

Yes I know weather is erratic and unpredictable, but this winter has been simply ridiculous. Yes, I blame this on global warming. I'm tired of having ice covered streets and sidewalks. March weather in january, and January waether in February.

One suggestion: stop idling your car! So often, I see cars running with nobody in them. Yes I know it's nice to go to a warm car, but few minutes of cold isn't going to hurt anyone, and you can cut your cars emissions! Every little bit helps at this point.

48: Oops!

Oops! My bad! Day late, dollar short.

This is my boyfriend. This was taken last summer (ahh. summer *sniff* *sniff* come back!!) up on the Mountain as we call it in Montreal.

47: Toasted head

Ok, not so good picture. Good wine though!

Got a study break coming up. One whole week to do nothing but study! And comment on PAD's!

46: Toys for Boys

One has to love a boyfriend who says, take a picture of my new router! Then, when in another bind, take a picture of my tools! He recently lost all his power tool to theft, and has been in the process of replacing them, so there you go!

45: Passing

Not much to say about this.

So I will rant and rave about Valentine's Day instead.  One has to be weary of a day that can be abbreviated to VD.  That being said, I find Valentine's day just one more example of how the masses can be manipulated with pretty colours, advertising, and mass marketing.  In my books, loving someone makes Valentine's Day every day, not just one day that happens to also coincide with a massacre.

That being said, if you like Valentine's Day and want to celebrate, please do.  I'll just pass...  Happy Valentine's Day ;-)

44:Trekking

My boyfriend, determined to find the lost lake, at the beginning of his quest.  He did find it, but hadn't brought his camera, so maybe I will join him next time he goes to find it!

43: Shark Attack!

Just when you thought it was safe because the river was mostly frozen over...

So, wandering around getting more of those cool ice pictures I like so much while making sure not to break through the ice, I notice this funnt thing sticking out of the ice. Low and behold, it looked like a shark fin. As far as I am concerned, this is a blatant taunt to the fact I didn't get to go diving anywhere this winter. Oh well. Hoefully thi summer!

Show in RAW, little dissapointed in the exposre. The sun was shining on the snow behind it, so the actual ice sculpture is a little underexposed. Some RAW stuff and then levels, curves, desat with channel mixer and then a blue curve on top to give it that blue hue.

And remember, sharks are out friends and greatly misunderstood by the mass populace. They are actually quite friendly! See! They can be our companions!

42: Icicle

 
So, this is an icicle, with lens flare added.  It was already there, but I thought, hey, Photoshop can make it really crazy, so I photoshopped it.

Gorgeous day, cold, but sunny, and lots of icicles!

41: Router

So, We get home after midnight, and I'm going, I need a PAD, and I can't do another breakdancing one because I've posted the two best ones I got... what can I do?

My boyfriend says, take a picture of my new router!! So, this is his new combination plunge/fixed base router. Should be funt o work with... needs a few nice bits, but those will come. Shot very quickly, and yes, I over neat imaged it, but I'm in a rush. Sorry. At least I actually took the picure today!!

40: Breakdance II

Ok, even though the quality isn't that great, I couldn't resist showing another breakdancing picture.  It's faceless, but still, with a slow shutter speed, turned out alright.

First night to just chill and do some work (I can tell you all about ratio analysis in accounting!), have dinner and a glass of fine since the stress of midterms.  This also meant not getting it together to take a picture.  Excuses excuses, I know.  Sorry!

39: Breakdance

Shot for one of my papers tonight. There was a breakdance competition tonight. The things these guys do is amazing. So, I didn't want to bring my whopper 2.8 zoom lens, which is just as well as it would not have been wide enough. However, this needed some major work. Lots of RAW processing, exposure compensation, tint and colour balance adjustments, plus some fill light. Then into PS for some levels, curves and contrast. Then to neat image. I didn't want to use flash because these guys were doing the head spins and stuff, and I didn't want to distract. Someone else used flash though and I did get a cross flash, but the picture itself was crappy. Oh well.

I cloned out two gusy heads in the lower corners, and as you can see, I did a crappy job rebuilding the shadow, but it will do for now.

Got a handful of things, and all I can say is they are not print quaility, but I think they'll work for a print paper. Was a lot of fun to watch these guys!

38: Jump!!

I know.  I'm starting to slack.  I'll have new stuff tomorrow.  I promise!  Today I'd like to comment, and I'd like to get some homework done.

Some light postporcessing.  Did some levels and curves because the stage lights are heavy on the red channels, and a bit of saturation as well.

37: Holy Snow

The title was my boyfriend's suggestion in relation to the cross from the window panes.  Old shot.  To brain dead from midterms, and very pissed off because I missed two or three questions by second guessing my self.  I actually had the right answer marked, and I change them to the wrong answer. ARGH

That being said, I'm on this blue kick.  My off center, and some of my prior posts I've been giving a blue tint, too.  I feel it works well with the snow and winter.

36: Hanging

More ice stuff. Experimenting with tones. Did a desat with channel mixer, then used curves in the blue channel to give it it's hue.

Forgot to Neat image it a bit, but I don't have time to do it and re save and re upload.

Friggin enthalpy and heat of formation. I'll be in a much better mood tomorrow. Hopefully get some commenting done tomorrow night